The Swimmer (32 page)

In the course of a second he decided to bet it all on this one card. With a scream he pretended to stumble, two quick steps down in a pretense of regaining his balance, then he threw himself forward, twisting so that he fell sideways down the last few steps.

‘Aaaaaaah,’ he cried.

He felt the worn wood of the stairs on his hip bone. His shoulder hit the parquet floor in the hall. But the only thing he saw was the phone and the charger. He managed to twist and stretch his arms toward the window as he landed. He grabbed the cord of the charger between his fingers and yanked as hard as he could. The phone was pulled down from the windowsill and landed on the floor. George’s head hit the heater and he felt something wet and sticky dripping into his eyes. He must have split an eyebrow. Through a reddish haze, he saw the phone in front of him on the floor, still spinning after the fall. He stretched his bound hands out for it and grabbed hold of its cold, smooth surface.

‘What the hell!’ he heard Kirsten hiss behind him.

Her feet thudded down the stairs. George leaned forward, one shoulder to the floor, and, using both his hands, he pressed the phone inside his waistband, down into those damn tighty-whities he’d gotten from Josh. For the first time since he got them, he was grateful they weren’t boxers. The phone would stay put in his underwear. He did his best to pull down the huge, borrowed sweatshirt to conceal his crotch.

Kirsten was behind him. I’m going to die, thought George. This is when I die.

‘What happened?’ she said with something like genuine concern in her voice.

‘I stumbled,’ George wheezed. ‘And these fucking handcuffs didn’t help.’

Kirsten crouched down beside him and George rolled onto his back with his hands over his crotch.

‘You’re bleeding,’ Kirsten said. ‘You’ve split an eyebrow. Nothing serious. But you’ll have to tape it. Come on, go into the bathroom and fix yourself up.’

George got up on his knees. His whole body aching, his eyebrow pounding. Was it possible? Was it really possible that she hadn’t seen the phone? He hardly dared to breathe but still managed a small smile.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Seriously, I didn’t mean to fall and hurt myself.’

‘Yeah, good thing we didn’t put you in a hood, you would have fallen right through the window,’ she said drily. ‘Get up.’

George stood up cautiously. He pinched the bleeding wound and started walking toward the bathroom.

The phone was cold and hard against his genitals. Was this what a last chance felt like?

Stockholm and Arkösund, Sweden

It’s the same airport, but a different time. Wood and glass and Starbucks. A confidence that didn’t exist here twenty-five years ago.
welcome to the capital of scandinavia
. Smiling people. It doesn’t resemble a funeral anymore. But the darkness is the same, as I maneuver my rented Volvo out onto the highway with jet lag breathing down my neck. Even the car design has changed. They are no longer coffins, more like water, with their flowing lines and tinted glass. Here’s where I’ll start to retrace my own footsteps and continue on where they end.

I drive over the same asphalt, through the same dense web of forest, over the same bridges and wet fields. The same road where everything is exactly as I remember it, and the only thing new is me. This is where I’ll suffer the consequences of my actions. This is where I’ll take hold of the story and change its course.

It’s been twenty-five years since I drove this road that one time and yet I remember it, never once glancing at the car’s GPS. Snow hangs in the air when I stop and buy coffee to keep from falling asleep. Microscopic crystals glitter weightlessly in the light from the shell select sign. Hard, compact steam billows out of my mouth. The cinnamon buns are bigger and sweeter. The coffee is no longer watery, but bitter and mixed with steamed milk. I throw half of it into a modern-looking trash can, covered with technical and complicated instructions for recycling, and continue driving down the almost deserted, black road. It’s difficult to stay within the speed limit. Impatience, fear, lack of time. They’re all hunting me like an outlaw. All I can think is that I regret everything. That maybe there’s nothing I don’t regret.

Somewhere near Norrköping I turn off the highway, onto small winding roads, and am engulfed in a darkness so intense that I have to slow down, a darkness so thick that it barely lets the light of the headlights through. Every single car I meet is an explosion that shakes my world for a moment until it passes. It shouldn’t surprise me, I’ve seen it before. But my history is false, full of constructions and justifications. Not even my memory of the dark matches reality.

This time I turn off before Arkösund. I avoid the obvious. I’m not sure how much my enemies know. The forest has thinned out and has been replaced by rocks and gnarled bushes. The black windows of empty summerhouses gleam in the headlights. The wind sings against the car and the windshield wipers skid in the rain or watery snow. If the clock on the instrument panel didn’t prove that it was late afternoon, I’d think it was the middle of the night. The asphalt turns into gravel, and finally the road ends at a dock where I see a single, open boat bouncing against its fenders in the wind.

I slow down and stop the car down by the dry reeds. Pull up the hood on my Gore-Tex jacket and step out into the storm. I lean over the trunk of the Volvo and pull open the sluggish zipper of the rubber duffel bag, which was already in the car when I picked it up. Double-check the Swiss automatic rifle that lacks both model name and serial number. Double-check the magazines. When I’m satisfied, I pull out a lined, waterproof jumpsuit, hat, waterproof gloves, the GPS with nautical charts already loaded and the route already plotted.

The small rubber boat is just where I was told it would be. Hidden in the bushes ten feet from the dock. Susan has worked fast. Prepared well.

I place my pack in the boat and attach the GPS to the control in front of me. Pull the light boat down to the edge of the water where I’m able to step in without getting wet. The snow flurries into my eyes. The wind is raging across the bay. Even this far in, the waves are white in the night. Farther out it will only get worse.

I look at the electronic chart and make adjustments so my route will be leeward and avoid the open water. It takes me a few tries to get into the rubber boat, which is rocking wildly in the wind. I take off my gloves and put my hands inside my jacket. My frozen fingers find their way to the zipper of the inside pocket. I open it and feel the locket’s aging silver against my fingers. For a moment I’m tempted to take it out so I can see you again. It’s been so long since I saw you. But it’s too dark, too windy. I can’t afford to lose it. My key, my shibboleth. Instead I close the jacket and push off from the beach. The sea is just as dark as everything else. The red route on the GPS’s nautical chart shines its lonely light in the rain, in the snow, in the wind.

Sankt Anna’s Outer Archipelago, Sweden

When Klara finally woke up, it was already dark. She sat up on the thin mattress and looked around in the soft, warm light from the stove’s smoldering fire, for a moment unsure of where she was. The wind shook the house, twisting around and through it, and came hissing, headlong over the metal roof and past the worn joints. Between the gusts, she heard the waves beating over the rocks just twenty yards from the house. Klara rubbed her eyes, remembering where she was.

How long had she been sleeping anyway? As soon as Bosse had left, an immense weariness had enveloped her as she felt the security of the sea and surrounding islands. Bosse and Gabriella. Gabriella? Klara crept shivering out of the sheets and over to the edge of the loft. Gabriella lay on her back on the couch, sleeping in front of the stove with a worn, red plaid blanket thrown over her legs. There was something peaceful, something so mundane and comforting about that scene.

‘Gabriella?’ Klara said gently. ‘Are you asleep?’

Gabriella grunted, turned onto her side, and blinked her eyes.

‘It seems so,’ she said, shivering, and pulled the blanket over herself. ‘Ugh, it’s so cold. What time is it?’

Klara turned her wrist and took a look at her watch.

‘Nearly eight,’ she said. ‘Oh my God, how long have I been asleep? Six hours?’

‘Well, you zonked out pretty quickly,’ said Gabriella. She paused, and seemed to be listening for something.

‘What a wind!’ she said.

‘Yes, Bosse wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was blowing in.’

Klara suddenly realized she was extremely hungry. The last thing she’d eaten was a dry ham sandwich at a gas station on the way down from Stockholm. She found her jacket and her jeans on the floor, and pulled them on before making her way over to the steps that led down to the cabin’s only room.

‘Salmon sandwich?’ Klara asked.

No sooner had the words left her lips than she froze in midmotion on the ladder. Cautiously, she turned her head and met Gabriella’s wide-open and wide-awake eyes. She’d heard it too.

Maybe it was the storm howling over the roof. Maybe it was a seabird in distress. But it had sounded like a human voice. Just briefly, almost hidden by the wind. Very close. Klara felt paralyzed. How was it possible?

‘What was that?’ whispered Gabriella.

Klara regained control of herself and climbed down the last few steps.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe just the storm?’

While she was whispering, she tiptoed quickly into the cabin’s kitchen area. The shotgun still stood where she’d left it, leaning in the corner beside the makeshift counter. On the floor beside it lay two square cardboard boxes of cartridges. The steel of the gun felt cold and familiar when Klara picked it up. She squatted down and opened one of the boxes, cracked open the gun, and loaded a shotgun shell into each barrel. The gun closed with a muffled click.

She gestured for Gabriella to leave the couch and come over to her. The faint glow of the stove didn’t reach all the way into the kitchen, and Klara only sensed the outline of Gabriella’s crouching figure as she took a few quick steps across the floor. She felt Gabriella’s hand on her elbow, her rapid breathing on her neck.

‘What do you think?’ whispered Gabriella. ‘It sounded like a voice, right?’

Klara shrugged.

‘Maybe. Impossible to say.’

But it had definitely sounded like a man’s voice. A short order given just a little too loudly in a moment when the storm was catching its breath.

‘What should we do?’

Klara heard a shade of anxiety in Gabriella’s voice. It was an anxiety that had the potential to escalate. The seed of panic. It was something Klara had learned to recognize far more intimately than she would have liked in the last week. And she knew that it needed to be checked immediately. She turned to her friend and let go of the gun for a moment to take her hand.

‘Gabriella, listen to me,’ she whispered. ‘We cannot afford to lose focus, okay? We can only think about what is happening right now. Not yesterday or tomorrow or even ten minutes from now. Just now, just the next movement, the next step. Do you understand? Can you try to do that? Keep your fear at bay.’

She heard Gabriella swallow.

‘Well, yes,’ she hissed. ‘What do you think? That I’m going to have a panic attack? Come on.’

Of course. She was an idiot to underestimate Gabriella. Of course she was just as capable, or incapable, of handling this situation as Klara was.

‘Good,’ she whispered. ‘Can you make your way to the window and try to see what it was? I’ll keep an eye on the door.’

Klara felt the warmth of Gabriella’s body depart as she shuffled across the floor toward one of the two windows facing toward the archipelago. If someone had landed on the island, they’d do it on the leeward side and not where the waves were beating too high to get ashore. The door, which Klara never looked away from, opened in the direction of the open sea. Behind the rain and wind Klara could hear the waves heaving over the cliffs.

It took maybe ten seconds before she heard Gabriella’s whispering voice again.

‘Klara, come here, it’s probably best you see this for yourself.’

With a firm grip around the barrel of the gun, Klara quickly crept across the floor to the window. She squatted down next to Gabriella.

‘What? What is it?’ she whispered.

But Gabriella didn’t have time respond before she saw for herself. On the same path that they had walked this morning. The weak skittering glow of a flashlight.

Arkösund, Sweden

George locked the door to the guest bathroom behind him and turned on the light. The small space had no windows, which was probably why Kirsten had left him alone in there. He looked at himself in the small mirror above the sink. He looked like shit. Half of his face was covered in bright red blood. The upper half of the sweatshirt was as well, and he could see the blood continuing to pump out of the little gash above his eyebrow. George had to swallow his queasiness, fight his body’s impulse to vomit. He hated blood. Especially his own. But he couldn’t think about that right now. He squeezed the gash and bent over to wash his face as best he could.

‘You look fucking terrible,’ Kirsten said when he opened the door and stepped out of the bathroom.

She smiled apologetically at him and handed him a round box. He took it with his shackled hands.

‘First aid tape,’ she said. ‘So you don’t get blood all over the house.’

‘Thank you,’ George said.

She gestured toward the stairs.

‘I’m afraid I have to lock you in again, George.’

This time George didn’t drag his feet. It took effort not to appear too eager to get back into his cage.

Sitting on the bed, he heard Kirsten’s footsteps disappear down the creaking stairs. After some fiddling, he managed to open the tape and at least temporarily staunch the flow of blood above his eyebrow. Kirsten hadn’t bothered to unlock his hands and just shook her head when he suggested it. He hadn’t insisted, terrified that she’d sniff out that something wasn’t right.